


Color Riot

by Missy



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Art, Artists, Character Study, Gen, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily and her art, captured throughout the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Color Riot

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Gen Battle, prompts: Art, rebellion.

When Lily turns six, she knows what she’s going to be. A Real Artist, like the people whose work hang on mommy’s wall. Color captivates her brain, driving her chubby fingers to clutch her thick colored pencils with undisguised glee.

Everything she sees ends up broken down into shapes and colors in her mind. At school, the highest honor is replicative homagery. She colors outside the lines and gets a check minus.

The older she gets, the more meaning art assumes in her life. For spring break, she saves and scrimps until she has enough to fly to Boston and drift through the Museum of Fine Art with Marshall’s loving but confused face right beside her. She streaks her dark hair with lines of aqua and gold until her degree demands hair of a less original hue.

By the time she’s a mom, by the time she has studio space of her own, she’s got enough gumption to think of herself. Her paintings hang here and there in motel rooms, the living rooms of friends and the parents of kids she’s taught.

She’s not famous, not rich, but there’s room for hope, for the possibility of what might be. And that, in the end, is enough to satisfy her.

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains characters from **How I Met Your Mother**. The author has no legal claim upon these characters, and this fiction is a work of fannish tribute, from which no money was made.


End file.
